Academic performance results on the 2025 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) show the United States has lost significant ground in reading since the test was last administered in 2022.
The global test assesses the reading, math, and science knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students. It is designed to measure problem-solving skills and application rather than assessing grade-level content expectations.
The 2025 PISA was taken by more than 760,000 students in 91 countries and economies, which is the largest assessment to date since it was first administered by the OECD in 2000.
One caveat on the U.S. data: OECD flagged the U.S. results this year because student and school response rates fell below PISA’s minimum targets, and student exclusions exceeded the allowed limits. OECD said it’s “not possible to rule out bias in PISA performance results, nor to determine its most likely direction.” U.S. scores could be somewhat higher or lower than what’s reported. The response-rate problems also meant OECD couldn’t break out U.S. results by race or family income this cycle because more than 40 percent of students didn’t complete the accompanying questionnaire.
Math and science results are about the same
While U.S. reading performance on PISA dropped considerably since 2022, average 2025 results in math and science were about the same since the last test cycle.
Science results have remained relatively stable across all PISA test cycles, with only small and non-significant fluctuations in results. Math and reading results, however, are both lower than 2018 and are among the lowest ever recorded for the U.S.
PISA Mean Performance in Reading, Math, & Science
Achievement gaps between low- and high-performing students did not change significantly in math, reading, and science compared to 2022. But compared to a decade ago (2015 results), the picture is worse, with the proportion of low-performing students increasing by 6 percentage points in math and 7 percentage points in reading. As my colleague Josiah Padley wrote here, the widening gap between these two student cohorts was also evident on U.S. national assessments.
“Today’s international education scores confirm a decade of stagnation and a devastating gap,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement to Education Week. “We successfully propel our highest achievers, but the lowest-performing students are falling further behind.”
“This moment is a stress test for our nation’s future. To pass it, we must enact a hard reset that stops protecting a failed status quo and instead builds a system that empowers state leaders and embraces innovative learning options through school choice.”
Comparison to other countries
Even with the dip in U.S. reading performance, the country’s average reading score in 2025 was higher than the average across OECD countries. Only three education systems scored higher: Singapore, the Chinese jurisdictions, and Taiwan. However, the U.S. had the largest gap in reading performance between its lowest- and highest-achieving students among the education systems that participated in PISA 2025.
The U.S. science gap between high- and low-performing performers is also one of the largest. In math, U.S. performance was close to the OECD average, although the U.S. ranked around 27th among participating education systems, which is noticeably weaker than its standing in reading or science. About 8 percent of U.S. students were top performers in math. The largest shares of students achieving the top math levels were in seven Asian countries and Chinese jurisdictions: B-S-J-Z China (54 percent), Singapore (37 percent), Taiwan (32 percent), Macao China (29 percent), Korea (23 percent), Japan (22 percent), and Hong Kong (21 percent).
Score drops weren’t limited to the United States. Across the OECD, student performance declined, with math and reading averages reaching the lowest ever recorded. One in five 15-year-old students “is now a low performer in science, mathematics and reading,” up from 16 percent in 2022, reports the OECD. This raises the question of whether American students are actually getting better or if our position appears better because others got worse faster.
Because the U.S. figures had sampling shortfalls this cycle, cross-country comparisons should keep that in mind. Researchers also note that because different countries structure and fund education differently than the United States, this can also complicate comparisons.
What’s behind the reading slide?
Determining what caused the United States and other countries to lose ground in reading is tricky. PISA itself doesn’t support cause-and-effect claims about what’s driving the score trends.
Technology, though, may be part of the explanation. According to OECD Director for Education and Skills Andreas Schleicher, the decline in reading for pleasure and a shift toward skimming and shallow processing that is common on social media could be impacting students’ ability to engage with longer, more complex texts. Test data showed a rise in “hasty readers” — students who read through texts quickly and got answers wrong as a result.
PISA also found a negative correlation between using AI for writing and reading scores. About half of students said they use AI at least once a week to help with schoolwork, and one in three said they’ve used it to draft writing assignments.
Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, pointed to COVID/school closures as a potential U.S.-specific factor. “It likely shows they [students] developed foundational literacy skills, but they did have interruptions when they were at the next level, and that might be why we see some of this hangover,” Soldner told Education Week.
The national focus on literacy improvement has resulted in states prioritizing early literacy reform through policy shifts. Minnesota’s READ Act is one example. But “far fewer states have designed comprehensive plans for older readers,” points out Education Week.
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Use this interactive dashboard to further explore PISA results.